Okay, we've got the ball rolling in the moderators' forum to discuss ideas and display graphics designs to a closed audience. I've layed out some brief suggestions for content style, which SD has cited, let's have a look at those, before we address direction:

VGF content ideas:
Game-themed, high quality (original) art of the week (myself, Val, AS, Ace?)
Chiptune of the week
OCRemix/cover song of the week(?)
Trailer of the week
Opinion piece of the week
Community update (high profile events inside community)
"Let's Play" of the week
Gaming oddities (rare controllers, etc)
Community comic art piece of the week(sprite comics included?)

Weekly game themes for the community to focus on, determined by community poll

To start with, those are just the general categories, but it does not give much direction to the style of content we need to pull in new traffic.

Art directions, writing, etc, have been recommended to follow an older war-propaganda style, in parody. The site will not be propaganda itself, it may host propaganda-esque content for itself and its themes.

Themes will be general in nature, but with a quirk that distinguishes it and directs the content and its discussion.

An example of what we do not want:Mario Bros

An example of what we do want:Games impacted by Mario Bros

Better, more specific but with a broader scope:Powerup implementations and alternatives over the years

An example of an entry addressing this could be:The best powerups to combat the occult.

or

Games which could benefit from a flamethrower. [size=0](conclusion: all of them)[/size]

The most important aspect to emphasize with this content isn't just your opinion, but why you believe what you do. In every instance, the first question to address is "why" and the second question is "how" - What is your perspective, where do you come from with it? Can you relate an interesting personal story to expand on the concepts at play? Write about your introspection.

What I want to incorporate to organise the site:

1. Literature guidelines. For opinion columns, etc, I want a standardised set of things that MUST be in each article. Format is easier to plan when the planning's already done, you just follow suit and trim content to its shape. Every hole is a square hole, etc.

2. Voting on themes in advance. We can't decide everything on the fly, we need unification and we need time to prepare content. A generous person would suggest a month, but we are few enough that two weeks should suffice. The books-publishing industry works a year in advance, do not baulk at this: we need time to hone content and editing can at least take a day or two of cross-talk.

3. Recommending pieces, even if you're not going to do them. You will receive credit for the concept contribution where possible, and we can always use good ideas. I think it would be best if we can create a pool of concepts where assignments are drawn from so writers don't get stuck in a dry spot.

To volunteer your interest, please post in the thread regarding that created by SD. To work out the details of organisation, additional threads can be made. Questions and suggestions for themes, content, or guidelines are welcome here

I muttered 'light as a board, stiff as a feather' for 2 days straight and now I've ascended, ;aughing at olympus and zeus is crying

I'd just like to point out to everyone how cool this could be if done well. Lots of good things could happen for our little community here.

-New people will begin to follow the site because they like the personality of the writers/bloggers
-New people will join the forum community for the same reasons
-New people will join the forums because they love the idea of being able to participate on such a fun site.

I firmly believe that if everyone stays on-task and we get as many people to help out as possible, this could be a huge thing for the site and for us. Also, the more people that help out, the fewer things will be heaped on the admins to do all the time.

Okay, well if you like older videogame-style music, there's a healthy amount of free software available to write music formatted to play on the NES and its emulators. Once you're practiced writing music in a basic sequencer like the one built into Mario Paint, it's not too difficult to work with something like NES synths, because you don't have to do any sound engineering, similar to Mario Paint or basic MID files.

NSF is short for "Nintendo/NES Sound File", writing music on a computer is called programming. Chiptune means music in the style of videogames, and references the "chipset" controllers on cartridges and built into systems.

If you just want to do the Mario Paint stuff, that's pretty cool, though. I think we could do a semi-frequent music update, to include a variety of music-related content.

I muttered 'light as a board, stiff as a feather' for 2 days straight and now I've ascended, ;aughing at olympus and zeus is crying